Little Sister Death

  My little sister, she tends em, the preacher was saying. He had approached the stacked boxes. She’s got a gift with serpents. Don’t think no more of pickin em up than you would playin with a puppy. They love her, too. They know she takes care of em.

  He casually opened the lid of one of the boxes as he spoke. The lid was hinged and it swung open smoothly. Swaw involuntarily stepped back, then saw the snake in the box was restrained by an inner lid of locking and by a layer of wire mesh. It was a copperhead coiled on a bed of straw, motionless, bright head aloft as if it were listening to some far-off sound Swaw had not heard as yet.

  That’s my little sister yonder, the preacher said, pointing, and Swaw turned, so caught up in the snake that he was aware of the girl’s presence for the first time. She stood in the corner facing an isinglass window of the tent watching him and slowly turned. Swaw suddenly felt chilled, aware of the cold layers of wet clothing against his skin, and for a dizzy second he thought he was going to faint, for the world darkened and everything looked vague and far away. The preacher was still talking, but sounds had diminished and Swaw couldn’t understand him.

  Swaw had known her the instant she began to turn, had in some dark cobwebbed corner of his mind known her surely before that by the long flaxen hair and the shape of her body beneath the dress. She was watching him with eyes luminous and compassionless as a cat’s. It was the girl who had beckoned him from Jacob Beale’s tombstone.

  Dark fell early. The rain had ceased. They came up the old roadbed by lanternlight, the bevy of giggling girls leading the way. When they reached the field there was no light in it, no sign of voices.

  I don’t see nothin, the woman said. There was accusation in her voice. I never heard nothin about no camp meetin neither.

  It was right about here, Swaw said. He seemed to be speaking to himself. He raised the lantern, and by the yellow light his sallow face looked carved from dark burnished wood. He peered into the darkness. A chorus of frogs called from the wet field.

  You come in drunkern a bicycle, she taunted. Likely you dreamed it or just made it up for meanness.

  He crossed the ditch. Below him he could hear water running in it. He went up the embankment and over the splitrail fence. He could feel morning glory vines and sawbriars tugging at him as he crossed into the field. The water was shoemouth deep and rose about his feet. The water looked opaque and illusory, the depth thrown into question, and for a moment there was something sinister about the barren field.

  What are you lookin for?

  He swung the lantern in an arc. There was something of desperation in his choppy movements. Dry weeds, the unbroken earth in the bare spots stood out in stark relief. Tire tracks, he said. And again, Tire tracks, goddamn it.

  Tire tracks, she said contemptuously.

  The girls had fallen into a sullen silence. There was to be no meeting, no gaiety, no singing, no snakes. No salvation.

  Boat tracks more likely, the eldest said, a harpy’s echo of her mother.

  Swaw didn’t reply. He hunkered to the wet earth. With his hand he parted the tall grass, saw only the rainwashed black loam. Hunkered there in the darkness, he felt before himself a door, madness already raising the hand to knock.

  Madness sniffing at his tracks like an unwanted dog. Madness would escort him the rest of the way there, clutching at him and whispering adulterous secrets in his ear.

  He could see them through the sundrenched window picking the last of the fieldpeas. Lorene and the three eldest, a gaggle of bonneted women moving through the garden above the creek, picking the dry peas into their aprons transferring them to burlap bags. Hogs in the field, he thought. Beyond them the silver water metallic in the sun.

  The house seemed locked in silence so intense he felt he could hear it. A buzzing undercurrent like electricity, the air harsh and surreal. He was waiting, but he didn’t know for what.

  Daddy? Retha called. Her voice was muffled through the walls.

  His hand released the sheer curtain. What? he said. He could still see them, spectral and distant, through the gauzy cloth.

  Come in here a minute.

  He went into the hall and to the bedroom door. He opened it. Good God, girl, he said. He could hardly speak. The sight of her made his breath catch in his throat. She was standing naked in a foottub, her body lathered with soapsuds. She had washed her hair and it clung wetly to her head, hung in curly tendrils that halfobstructed her soapy breasts, small and perfectly formed. His eyes fell to the smooth white of her belly, the dark patch of pubic hair white with lather. The long white expanse of her legs hurt his chest.

  Will you git me a towel off the clothesline?

  He forced himself to back through the door. He slammed it to behind him. He could hear her voice through the door, querulous, a childlike whine crept into it.

  What’s the matter, Daddy?

  He could hear their voices nearing the house, the girls sniggering about something. The old woman’s coarse monotone cutting through. He could see the harsh sun white through the screen. They ascended the steps into his sunlit vision.

  Daddy, she called again.

  He returned with the towel and handed it through, extending his arm without fully opening the door.

  Later that day Swaw opened the door to the toolshed, had already reached for the bottle he had hid above the door lintel. Half the floor had been wrecked out before Swaw’s time, and he found Retha sitting on the edge of the floor watching him. He turned, startled, then began to search all around as if he had come in for some particular tool.

  What are you lookin for?

  Never you mind what I’m lookin for, Retha. What are you doin in here?

  Just sittin in here where it’s quiet.

  Go on and get out of there. You’re liable to get copperhead bit.

  She got up reluctantly. I like it in here, she said.

  Why? It seems a funny place to come and sit.

  I don’t know.

  Swaw liked it out here and he didn’t know why either. All he knew was that the door of the toolshed seemed to close off the rest of the world. When you were in the toolshed things you worried about didn’t bother you. Everything was timeless in here. There was a different perspective to things. In fact, there weren’t any things, as if the toolshed and its handhewn cedar door was the sum totality of existence, finite, the only thing there was. Swaw didn’t want to share it.

  Go help your mama get in the last of them tomaters, he said, and don’t let me catch you back in here again. You git snakebit you’d die fore I could git you to a doctor, even with that wagon and team.

  When she was gone he got down the bottle and drank, then sat on the wooden floorboards, feeling the warm assurance of alcohol feeding all through him. He rolled himself a Country Gentleman smoke and lit it, watched the blue smoke shift hazily in the columns of spilled light.

  He heard laughter. A girl’s laughter, children, secretive and faint, and for some reason he suddenly felt like a trespasser or eavesdropper. He knew subconsciously he was listening to something that had not been said for his ears.

  Yet consciously he thought, Them damn trifling girls. He thought about getting up to go look and he was just about to do so when a feminine voice no more than eight or ten inches from his ear said quite distinctly, Don’t do that no more, Daddy.

  Swaw was up like a shot. Damn you, Retha, he said. He looked wildly about. No one, nothing save bits of straw drifting in moted light. He threw open the door and flooded the shed with hot sunlight. Retha was going through the garden gate, a basket swinging in her hand. He heard the hinges creak as the door closed behind her.

  Saturday morning he went to a movie. He sat in the darkness and watched the flickering screen. He couldn’t concentrate on the film. It was all horses and gunfire, stagecoaches and buckboards running away. A blondhaired girl was beset with troubles the buckskin hero must set to rights. He wished desperately his life had the stark simplicity of a movie. Black was immediately di
stinguishable from white, right from wrong.

  He felt beleaguered on all sides. The old woman and his daughters were mad at him. She was afraid they were going to be run off the Beale place. Beale was looking for him, mad about the corn still standing in the field, he guessed.

  He was vaguely aware of the voices of children around him in the darkness. He could feel the halfpint bottle through his bib pocket. It was warm and comforting, a trusted familiar, a docile pet that always knew him well and showed it. He took it out and unscrewed the cap and drank. It was bad whiskey, an evil smell uncoiling in the darkness, and his stomach almost revolted. He felt hot vomit rise in his throat. He swallowed and closed his throat and suppressed it. After a minute he felt a little better. Every small victory counted now.

  Hey, they don’t allow no drinkin in here, an old woman said behind him.

  Swaw turned around. He could barely make her out. A bitter, dried-up old woman, the very embodiment of reprimand. Shut up, you old whore, he said. He didn’t bother to lower his voice. He could hear the sharp intake of the woman’s breath. The theatre fell abruptly silent about him. Swaw went back to watching the movie.

  Sepia sagebrush images flickered there. A Never Never Land that never was. Black villains, heroes and heroines pure as the driven snow. Injustice settled with a gloved fist, a .45 revolver that seemed to never need reloading. Might makes right.

  He felt the whiskey soaking through a tide of warm flames flickering in his flesh. The movie seemed to be ending. The heroine embraced the hero. Her lithe arms encircled his neck. Mash them titties agin him, Swaw thought. Past his broad shoulder she looked directly at Swaw. Her hair was long and blond, wavering to her shoulders and ending in a mass of curls. Her eyes were calculating as a cat’s. Her lips parted, and he could see the white predatory line of her teeth. Her lips moved. You, she said above the romantic swell of music. He lurched to his feet.

  Hey, sit down there, a voice called.

  He didn’t turn. He stood looking at the screen. A catcall of voices arose, a Coke cup wadded around a core of ice caught him hard in the temple. He half fell, caught on the row of seats in front of him, whirled peering into the darkness. Who done that? he cried. Which one of you little cocksuckers thowed that at me?

  Lord God, the old woman said. She struggled to her feet.

  He could hear giggling beyond the circle of dark. He shambled blindly toward it, felt the ungiving wood seats hard against his shins. He leant over the row of seats, slapping at the children, swaying like a drunken bear. Son of a bitches, he told them. Little rich bastards. Another drink cup caught him between the shoulder blades and he lurched toward a new set of tormenters. After a moment he trudged up the aisle over a carpet of paper and spilt popcorn.

  He wandered out blinking against the bright daylight. He sat on the curb a moment examining his barked shins. He rolled himself a smoke and lit it. He felt the bottle against his breast, cooler now, remote, alien. He knew without taking it out that it was empty. He got up and started down the street, an air of purposeful resolution about him.

  In the Snow White Café he ran up with Charlie Cagle. Your old woman’s a huntin ye, Cagle told him. I seen her peepin in the winder a while ago. She had a mean look on her face and a stick in her hands about this long.

  Cagle was joking but Swaw wasn’t in a joking mood. He sat down at the bar and ordered a draft beer. When it came he sat staring morosely into it. The hell with her, he said after a time.

  Hell, I was just joshin you, Owen. I ain’t even seen her.

  Cagle thought Swaw looked bad. He moved as if he were in a trance. He hadn’t shaved in a week or two, and from the smell of him he hadn’t had a bath either. His clothes were stiff with grease and sweat; Cagle figured if Swaw climbed out of them they’d stand alone. His eyes were blackrimmed and red, as if an obscure rage flared behind them. Swaw looked like the middle of a long drunk with no end as yet in sight.

  Cagle tried to draw him into conversation. How you farin out the Beale place?

  All right.

  You ain’t seen or heard nothin out of the way?

  Swaw was silent a moment. No, he said at length.

  So he has, Cagle said to himself. He has, and he don’t want to talk about it. But that’s all right. He don’t owe me nothin. I never done nothin for him only take them in when there was nowhere else to go and got a job when nobody else would hire him. I reckon that rubbertired wagon rolled him someplace where he don’t remember none of that.

  Pigs, Swaw said, or that’s what Cagle understood him to say.

  What?

  All they are is goddamned hogs, gruntin and squealin. Wantin one thing and then another. He drained the mug of beer, set it down hard, and ordered another. He was going through his pockets one by one. Ultimately he dredged up two greasy ones and a handful of silver. Gimme a pack of them rubbers, he said. The barman laid the coinshaped foil package on the counter and picked up Swaw’s quarter.

  Hot time in the old town tonight, Owen?

  What?

  Nothin, the barkeep said. I was just foolin with ye.

  Don’t fool with me today, Swaw said.

  The barkeep went to fool with somebody else.

  A man two stools down had turned to study Swaw. Owen better hope that team knows the way home, he said.

  Swaw didn’t reply. He drained his beer, laid the change on the bar, and arose. He turned toward the door.

  Where you off to, Owen?

  Swaw didn’t reply. He was looking directly at Cagle, but Cagle didn’t think he saw him. His eyes were inwardlooking, opaque as glass buttons. He turned and went out.

  When he came from putting the horses in the barn, she was standing on the doorstep blocking his way. I want to talk to you, she said.

  Talk away, Swaw said.

  Old man Beale was out here.

  Say he was. What did he want?

  What do you think he wanted? He wanted to know when you was goin to gather the rest of that corn. And I wouldn’t mind knowin myself.

  Well?

  Well, what?

  When are you?

  When are I, when are I, he mimicked her. When they start shipping snowballs out of hell by the boxcar load. That’s when. You drunk bastard.

  He waved a disparaging hand at her and turned away.

  Owen Swaw, don’t you walk off and me talkin to you, she called after him.

  He was walking toward the grove of liveoaks, listing a little to the left. Dusk was gathering. The western sky looked muddy red.

  He came unsteadily up the slope toward the homeplace, his feet dragging a little in the high grass. Atop its summit was a yellow poplar the spring winds had blown over. He had been thinking about sawing it to lengths for wood, but he saw now his mind wasn’t working right. He had brought neither ax nor saw.

  The girl was sitting on the butt of the poplar log. She seemed to have been awaiting him. She had one bare foot on the ground and the other cocked on the log, her knee drawn up against her breasts. Her arms encircled the leg and her chin rested atop it. She watched him moodily from beneath her tangled blond curls.

  He halted, staring at her. She sat motionless, just watching him back.

  Hidy, she said.

  Or he thought she said it. He heard it in his mind clear as a bell but he didn’t know whether she had spoken or not. He hadn’t seen her lips move, but he knew it was what she would have said had she spoken.

  Hidy, Swaw said awkwardly.

  Her face was pale in the waning sun, her gray eyes level and inscrutable. You got any drink on ye, Mr. Swaw?

  With her knee hiked up like that he could see all the way up her dress, the white expanse of thigh and the blond hair at the juncture, the slightly parted flesh of her sex. She seemed not to mind his scrutiny.

  Shore I got a drink. He reached her the halfpint bottle.

  She unscrewed the cap and took a delicate drink, coughed a little, and shook her head. She handed it back.

  You like that? br />
  It’s all right. I just like the way it makes me feel. Giddy and silly. The boys used to slip me a drink sometime. Drewry used to. It was a sight better whiskey than this, though. You know Drewry?

  No.

  I thought everybody knew Drewry. Drewry’s all right. What are you lookin at?

  I ain’t lookin at nothin.

  She laughed. The shit you ain’t. You’re lookin up my dress.

  He looked away. A dark stain of twilight was seeping across the cornfield.

  Stead of lookin at mine you ought to be studyin about some a little closer to home. You lettin them hogs of yourn run wilder’n a oneeyed jack, ain’t ye?

  I don’t know.

  Say you don’t? You didn’t catch one of em locked up there in the honeysuckles behind the woodshed? You ain’t seen em playin that stinkfinger down below the spring there ever night?

  Swaw drank from the bottle and shuddered.

  A man do what he ought to do. He’d just lay around him with a shotgun and be done with it all, clean the whole nest of em out. Just be out of the whole mess.

  He tried to shut it out of his mind, then something hard, a stick, struck him a vicious blow across the shoulders. He recoiled in pain. The girl cried out and writhed beneath him, her face, or his perception of it, altering, widening, the gray eyes darkening to a deep brown even as he watched in astonishment, the pale wisps of light hair at her temples coarsening and turning black until it was Retha’s hair, Retha’s face twisted beneath his own.

  Oh sweet Jesus, he cried. He was abruptly sobbing raggedly. He pulled away from her and saw momentarily her white body sprawled on the quilts. Then his eyes whirled to see the hoehandle coming again, a demented and outraged Lorene swinging it. You bastard, she was saying over and over, spitting it at him. You bastard, you. The hoe caught him a glancing blow alongside the head. He threw up his arms to protect his face. His mouth was hurting already and all he could think of was the pain. He stumbled toward her, fending at the hoe, feeling it stinging against his arms.